


On the Shores of Darkness there is a Light

by Honey_Rae_Pluto



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Blindness, Colours, Frian, Love, M/M, Romance, maycury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26866867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honey_Rae_Pluto/pseuds/Honey_Rae_Pluto
Summary: Brian's been blind his whole life, always wondering what colours look like, always having Freddie tell him about them. But when he finally gets his vision for the first time his perspective changes completely.
Relationships: Brian May/Freddie Mercury
Comments: 13
Kudos: 40





	On the Shores of Darkness there is a Light

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya, just a short little ditty here, hope everyone likes it - I'd love to read some feedback for it! If anyone wants to ask or request you can head over to my tumblr (same name).
> 
> Love,  
> Pluto xxx

“Colour?” Freddie looked at him curiously, still curled into his side like a cat, gently rubbing the medical tape with a damp paper towel, “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like light, I guess, it’s everywhere.”

“I know the science, Fred. I know how light refracts and bounces in waves and is interpreted by the human eye,” Brian shook his head momentarily getting out of Freddie’s hold, “I just don’t know what to imagine for it. I know the shapes and facts about the things around me, I know how they feel. I know what colour they are - I know what colour I’ve been told they are. I want to really know it though.”

“Brimi…” Freddie stopped what he was doing, taking his hands. He hoped this wasn’t another episode; they’d just been through a rough one a few months ago when he didn’t get the first class degree his parents wanted, he doubted that episode was even fully over, but they needed time before the next one.

Especially not one so soon after the operation. It was meant to be a good thing, not a bad thing, something he’d always wanted.

Freddie looked at his hands; holding Brian’s thin long ones delicately, the chipped white nail polish matching his own black ones. Brian wanted colour, he wanted the feeling of colour. He’d have to find the words, for Brian. He always found the words for him.

“They’re just memories, Bri, all these colours. White reminds me of linen, soft and always smelling like you could hide in it away from the monsters, if that makes sense. Black should be scary, should be moody and tempestuous, but it’s not. To me it’s warm, it wraps about you in the dead of night like an embrace, it’s not as stifling as the world pretends.”

He could’ve just told the curly haired man to take the bandages off quickly and look, to just do what they were going to do and see it for himself. That was the whole point of him doing this, getting fixed. He wasn’t meant to be asking for descriptions now.

“Yellow is strong, it means something indistinguishable, like a word in a foreign language or a tome you can’t read. It sounds like a hum, or water in a lonely urban river.”

But the descriptions seemed to soothe him, assure him that the world was what he wanted. So he would just keep telling him, no matter how often he needed it.

“Orange is like the calm before the storm, the Machiavellian villain readying his guile, it’s clever, like the smell of rain or the sound of a distant hubbub.”

Brian nodded eagerly. This was the explanation he wanted. He could feel Freddie’s warm hands on his own, fingers versed perfectly to each line and crease he found there. The guitarist had found a line to hold onto in Freddie found a way of seeing.

“Blue is a stereotype of itself. It’s too deep to comprehend, vast and old and burden carrying. It’s blue I’m scared of. You can get lost in it, wondering what it holds, how dark it can become without mercy, how light without ambition. It’s forlorn, like the single ring of a bell, or the creeping cold of the morning.”

He’d first met Freddie years ago, studying physics while the latter studied art - both interested in the music that brought them together. Freddie had been fascinated with him at that moment - he wasn’t how the preconceived idea of a blind man went.

Roger had mentioned Smile’s guitarist, a vague name and description, but never actually told him much: and there was so much to be said. The older man watched Brian play guitar, quietly and reservedly as he leaned on the amp. He marvelled at how his fingers seemed to find the chords from instinct. He was kind, Fred realised, he hardly ever raised his voice as if he knew the very way which it would hurt.

“Red is simple, it just is. It’s young, like a meadow, it lies in the sun and feels the breeze. It looks like a knock on a wooden floor. People say love and violence are red, I say they are the same, passion isn’t red. Passion is ambiguous, like glass. It goes both ways, but pain and happiness are inextricably linked. No, no red isn’t like that, red is just there.”

He’d had no interest in Freddie to begin with, he was blind, what use was art to him? Artists tended to be sensationalists, overbearing with abstract concepts and ideas that would be lost on him. But Brian relented after a while, withered down to liking the man, going along to his wild ideas and realising they were on the same wavelength. They melded into their equal opposition, making up what the other lacked.

“Green is fluid. It changes meaning as it goes, it’s molten essence is sad some days, carrying with it hurt and tears that never fall. Other days it’s light, I don’t mean to say it’s happy: but it’s like a veil, thinly lying on top of laughter and a dear friend’s embrace. Perhaps that’s sad too.”

Then they’d just fallen in together. It wasn’t like a fall really, not how the movies described love - a sudden plummet towards a turbulent life. No, they just seemed to fuse, slip rather than click, slowly and with little flourish.

“Purple, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s that feeling you get just before nostalgia, but after deja vu, where you know but it doesn’t feel like anything yet. It’s just familiar. Like windchimes or the ruins of a castle.”

When Brian was offered this operation, he’d jumped at the opportunity. Who wouldn’t? He hadn’t faultered in the decision until recently. 

“The world you see is so thoughtless to it all, these colours tint the happiest memories and the meaningless days,” Brian told him quietly, “At least I could not see to have them fade.”

“Hey, it’s okay. They don’t fade, but life is more than colours. A painter portrays a moment in stillness, not the shades of the second.” Freddie gently pried away at the last of the tape, using his softest touch, “One last bit to go.”

The bandages had been on for a few days now, the operation a fortnight before that, but now was the moment. Freddie had loosened all the tape securing the pads to his eyes, slowly peeling away the cotton so as not to hurt him.

“Can you open your eyes?”

“I don’t want to now,” Brian shook his head, "What if it isn't how I imagined?"

"The world?" Freddie looked at him carefully, sitting in their tiny little garden at sunset. They'd been lucky that the sky was a soft pink, the horizon blazing into orange. He looked up, holding Brian's hand. "Bri, the world isn't how you imagined it. I can see a myriad of colours up in the sky tonight, stars shining through the darkest blues and blacks at the top, the mountains lit up like fury gripping onto passion. I can see the song of the sky, the colours interwoven to play it. These things come and go and we are here to wonder at its beauty, to make a muse of it. But that’s why we have to look, it’ll never be how we imagine, but without it we imagine a poor imitation. It's night like these that remind me of you."

"I'm scared." Brian didn't dare open his eyes yet. The knowledge of how much was out there was overwhelming. It would be like existing in a whole new dimension, living in a whole other life.

"I know, and it's not always like this, these colours. They're perpetually mortal. Brian. The sky will die tonight, it'll be over and the colours will fade to memory, but for the moment they are unabated. They will live forever for the eyes of youth."

"How does it remind you of me? I'm neither constant nor eternal," the guitarist asked, "I don't fall away from existence every night, just to come back at dawn."

"I know, love, it's just how I see you. The colours of your soul, how much they contrast and brawl to make you, how the humours rise and fall in balance." Freddie told the blind man, “It’s what I love you for.”

Brian gave his hands a squeeze, he had to do it now. He’d opened his eyes before, but he’d never seen, he didn’t know what to expect.

The light was bright, like in the cliches he’d heard about, but it wasn’t too strong. It wasn’t blinding. It was just bright. He looked, for the first time at Freddie’s face, the way the shadows and light created his features and the way he smiled. Brian couldn’t look away.

Now he knew what to imagine, tears blurring his new vision and his eyelashes making him unfocus to try to see them, looking back at Freddie's face every few seconds.

He couldn’t find words, there didn’t seem to be any that fitted. Everything was just so there, the way Freddie’s eyes looked warm, the slightest folds on his silk shirt that the pale skylight highlighted, the way he looked so close, the shadows under his cheekbones and the peachy curve of his lip. Brian reached out numbly, fingertips brushing Freddie's chin. He felt the colours he had been missing his whole life.

“Babe? Babe it’s okay, I’m here,” Freddie took his hand, positioning it at his lips. “Look out, the sky, all you studied and love: all your stars are out there.”

He pointed to the now saturated sky, bolder than he’d ever seen it. Maybe the universe knew it was only meant to be seen by one person, the person he loved.  
“Look, Bri, it’s beautiful. The sunset, all those colours I told you about - they’re out there. A kaleidoscope just for you, my dear.”

Brian glanced quickly at it, not knowing what the colours were all called, but knowing how they felt. He knew what they meant to Freddie, and he knew what Freddie meant to him.

“I’m already looking at my Kaleidoscope,” Brian told him, turning back to make eye contact for the first time, “I don’t need that universe. Not now. I’m looking at all that will ever exist in my mind.”

“But the colours-”

“You are all my colours, Fred.”


End file.
